


She'd tried to make them strangers, once

by adrenalin211



Category: Justified
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrenalin211/pseuds/adrenalin211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s in just as deep as ever, and he almost laughs at himself, silly to believe time and distance could serve to get back the piece of himself he’d just...given to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She'd tried to make them strangers, once

**Author's Note:**

> This is for you, . The Dec 3rd prompt was _"If I am a stranger now to you, I will always be_. The prompt post is [here!](http://adrenalin211.livejournal.com/7314.html#cutid1). Contains season 2 spoilers.

When his Ma had passed, Aunt Helen’d started filling a motherly role (not what he’d have called it at the time) in simple, small ways. Starching and de-staining all of his white school shirts. Sweeping the kitchen when it got to be too filthy. Packing his lunches: a hard-boiled egg, potato roll with somethin’ like cheese in it, and, if he’d been real well-behaved and lucky, a pack of strawberry fruit snacks.

Raylan’d loved fruit snacks. He’d loved them then and he loves them now. They used to be simple and circular, free of machine-molded cartoon characters, okay to get caught with at school. The most anyone would want to do to you is trade you for ‘em.

Thing is, nowadays he can’t seem to find any that are acceptable for adults. So, when he’s having a day shaped by nothing other than mediocrity, doesn’t need the whiskey to numb him, but isn’t quite in the mood for some vanilla ice cream, he spends thirty seconds or so lamenting the fact that he can’t enjoy a pack of fruity treats without beheading a Scooby Doo.

Fruit snacks don’t exactly match the exterior: flat-brimmed hat and cowboy boots, ready-to-draw handgun always holstered at his side.

So when Winona gets into his hotel room and he doesn’t bother hiding the evidence, well.

That about says it.

He’s in just as deep as ever, and he almost laughs at himself, silly to believe time and distance could serve to get back the piece of himself he’d just...given to her.

(She’d told him once, before she left, that he reminded her of some fucking John Prine song. She’d screamed off these ridiculous lyrics in her tear-stained Kentucky ire that had slapped him like alcohol in an open gash: _How the hell can a person go to work in the morning and come home in the evening and have nothin’ to say?_ )

She’d been wrong, though. It wasn’t that he couldn’t tell _her_. Just that he didn’t think anyone deserved to be exposed to the things in his head. He’d wanted to protect her from it, lock her out, best he knew how.

So when she sashays into his hotel with those heels and legs and that silk-like blue dress that clings in just the right places (the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on), she raises her eyebrow at the almost empty box of cherry, lemon, lime and orange _Star Wars_ gummies and she shrugs like she’s not at all surprised, and why would she be?

They’d done this for years and years. He’d even added this boyish request to her cute little grocery lists she used to keep on the fridge in their old place.

“Yoda, Raylan?” She picks up a wrapper; her lips curve at the corner. _“Really?”_

He grins up at her, motions to the bed so she’ll come sit next to him. “I’ll have you know, Yoda is very flavorful. Almost as good as your rhubarb pie, if my recollection serves.” Raylan pats the spot next to him, but she doesn’t sit down quite yet. “I’m willing to share, if you’re nice about it.”

She places a kiss on his forehead. “You remember that pie?” she whispers, maybe a bit of flattered in her voice.

“Now how could I forget?”

After she pours herself a glass of water and sits down next to him, she gives him that _look_. The one that tells him she’s close enough to see that his lip is freshly bleeding. Then, a wince that lets on that maybe now a bruise is starting to show.

She takes on a soft tone, moves closer to him on the bed, and says, “What happened, Raylan?”

(Only time he ever likes his own name is when it comes out of her mouth.)

He’ll tell her tonight. He’s not gonna make that mistake, not gonna give her any reason to leave again, now that he remembers what it’s like to have her here. To feel the weight of her body in the night and hold her, skin-to-skin (beads of sweat forming on the small of her back), as her gasp penetrates the quiet.

She’d tried to make them strangers, once. But familiarity, as fortune would have it, is an old habit that’s not dying hard.

Not dying at all, actually.


End file.
